You Can Deal With Stress

Stress can be understood to arise from two sources, internal and external. Since the focus of this article is the role of relaxation in stress management, managing external sources of stress will be covered in another article. As we turn our attention to internal sources of stress and how to manage these it is important to note that such issues as self-talk, attitudes and habits are internal sources of stress in addition to whatever tension the body is holding.

Bodily tension itself, can be seen as a response to stress, either internal or external, and this tension in the body will be the focus of this article.  Using relaxation as part of a stress management program is important, convenient and effective mainly because the tension response is ubiquitous as a reaction to stress from any source and one that can be brought under our own personal control. Indeed, few people realize that it is possible to effectively reduce tension caused by stress no matter how much stress we find ourselves in or how strong our reaction to stress is. An example I like to use is that of the Olympic athlete. It is becoming increasingly common for world class athletes to add relaxation training to their training routines.  The reason for this is that the stress response and bodily tension can significantly interfere with an athlete’s performance during competition. By learning how to relax and focus their full attention on the task at hand athletes are able to perform better. We like to point out that if an Olympic athlete can effectively use relaxation during their athletic performance in front of millions of spectators and with the degree of pressure they face during competition that we, as ordinary people, can certainly bring relaxation into all aspects of our life.

Regularly accessing the relaxation response both reduces tension directly and increases the ease of accessing the relaxation response in the future. By reducing bodily tension regularly stress is regularly reduced and by acquiring the capability to quickly and easily access the relaxation response  the facility is gained to bring relaxation to bear directly and powerfully for those times when tension builds up suddenly in response to stress.

In fact, regular practice of relaxation can be seen as a method of stress prevention rather than just stress management.